Constitutional Development

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Constitutional Development

The Basic Law provides that the ultimate aim is to elect the Chief Executive ("CE") and Legislative Council ("LegCo") by universal suffrage, in the light of the actual situation of Hong Kong and in accordance with the principle of gradual and orderly progress.

The Decision of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress of 2007 has made clear the universal suffrage timetable: Hong Kong may implement universal suffrage for the CE in 2017 and following that, all Members of the LegCo may be returned by universal suffrage.

To attain the ultimate aim of the selection of the CE by universal suffrage provided for in Article 45 of the Basic Law, after conducting two rounds of extensive and systematic public consultations which lasted for a total of seven months, the HKSAR Government put forward a package of proposals for the method for selecting the CE by universal suffrage. The proposals are constitutionally in order, lawful, reasonable and rational. However, the proposals were ultimately vetoed at the LegCo Meeting on 18 June 2015.

The method for selecting the 4th term CE in 2012 will continue to be adopted to select the 5th term CE in 2017, i.e., the CE is to be elected by a 1200-member Election Committee. Constitutional development has to come to a standstill as a result, and it is difficult to know when the aim of selecting all Members of the LegCo by universal suffrage could be attained.

The work of the current term HKSAR Government in taking forward constitutional development has come to an end. In the remaining two years, the HKSAR Government will focus on handling economic and livelihood policies. The HKSAR Government hopes that different sectors of the community could enhance communication and rebuild mutual trust, so as to work together on various economic development and livelihood issues.